Economic History

Readings

LEC #	TOPICS	READINGS
Agrarian Economies and the Industrial Revolution
1	Ancient Rome	Temin, Peter. “The Economy of the Early Roman Empire.” Journal of Economic Perspectives (Winter 2006): 133-51.
2	Early Modern Europe	Allen, Robert C. “The Great Divergence in European Wages and Prices from the Middle Ages to the First World War.” Explorations in Economic History 38 (October 2001): 411-47. Greif, Avner, Paul Milgrom, and Barry R. Weingast. “Coordination, Commitment, and Enforcement: The Case of the Merchant Guild.” Journal of Political Economy 102 (August 1994): 745-76.
3	European Expansion	Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Co., 1997, chapter 18, pp. 354-75. ISBN: 0393038912. Acemoglu, Daron, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson. “The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation.” American Economic Review 91 (December 2001): 1369-1401.
4	Malthusian Demography	Laslett, Peter. The World We Have Lost: Further Explored. 3rd ed. London, UK: Menthuen, 1983, chapters 4-5, pp. 81-121. ISBN: 0416353401. Lee, Ronald. “An Historical Perspective on Economic Aspects of the Population Explosion.” In Population and Economic Change in Developing Countries. Edited by Richard Easterlin. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1980, pp. 517-557. ISBN: 0226180263. Chiang, Chin Long. “The Life table and its construction.” In Introduction to Stochastic Processes in Biostatistics. New York, NY: John Wiley, 1968, chapter 9, pp. 189-217.
5	The Demographic Transition	Boyer, George. “Malthus Was Right After All: Poor Relief and Birth Rates in Southeastern England.” Journal of Political Economy 97 (February 1989): 93-114. Crafts, N. F. R. “Some Dimensions of the ‘Quality of Life’ during the British Industrial Revolution.” Economic History Review 50 (November 1997): 617-39. Fogel, Robert W., and Dora L. Costa. “A Theory of Technophysio Evolution, with some Implications for Forecasting Population, Health Care Costs, and Pension Costs.” Demography 34 (February 1997): 49-66.
6	English Financial Institutions	North, Doughlas C., and Barry R. Weingast. “Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England.” Journal of Economic History 49 (December 1989): 803-832. Neal, Larry, and Stephen Quinn. “Networks of Information, Markets, and Institutions in the Rise of London as a Financial Centre, 1660-1720.” Financial History Review 8 (April 2001): 7-26. Brunt, Liam. “Rediscovering Risk: Country Banks as Venture Capital Firms in the First Industrial Revolution.” Journal of Economic History 66 (March 2006): 74-102.
7	The Industrial Revolution: Description	Ashton, T. S. The Industrial Revolution, 1760-1830. London, UK: Oxford University Press, 1948. ISBN: B000E6903S.
8	The Industrial Revolution: Analysis	Temin, Peter, and Hans-Joachim Voth. “Credit Rationing and Crowding Out during the Industrial Revolution: Evidence from Hoare’s Bank, 1702-1862.” Explorations in Economic History 42 (July 2005): 325-48. Voth, Hans-Joachim. “Time and Work in Eighteenth-Century London.” Journal of Economic History 58 (March 1998): 29-58.
The Spread of Industrialization
9	Northern Europe	Gerschenkron, Alexander. Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective: Essays by Alexander Gerschenkron. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962, chapter 1, pp. 5-30. ISBN: 0674226003. Moser, Petra. “How Do Patent Laws Influence Innovation? Evidence from Nineteenth-Century World’s Fairs.” American Economic Review 95 (September 2005): 1214-36. O’Rourke, Kevin H. “The European Grain Invasion, 1870-1913.” Journal of Economic History 57 (December 1997): 775-801.
10	Southern Europe	Berger, Helge, and Mark Spoerer. “Economic Crises and the European Revolutions of 1848.” Journal of Economic History 61 (June 2001): 293-326. Putnam, Robert D., Robert Leonardi, and Raffaella Nanetti. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993, chapter 5, pp. 121-62. ISBN: 0691078890. Toniolo, Gianni, Leandro Conte, and Giovanni Vecchi. “Monetary Union, Institutions and Financial Market Integration.” Explorations in Economic History 40 (October 2003): 443-61.
11	Africa	Feinstein, Charles H. An Economic History of South Africa: Conquest, Discrimination, and Development. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005, chapters 3-4, pp. 47-89. ISBN. 0521850916.
12	Ottoman and Russian Empires	Pamuk, Sevket. “Estimating Economic Growth in the Middle East since 1820.” Journal of Economic History. (Forthcoming, September 2006.) Allen, Robert C. Farm to Factory: A Reinterpretation of the Soviet Industrial Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003, chapters 1-2, pp. 1-46. ISBN: 0691006962. Johnson, Simon, and Peter Temin. “The Macroeconomics of NEP.” Economic History Review 46 (November 1993): 750-767.
13	China	Broadberry, Stephen, and Bishnupriya Gupta. “The Early Modern Great Divergence: Wages, Prices, and Economic Development in Europe and Asia, 1500-1800.” Economic History Review 59 (February 2006): 2-31. Miron, Jeffrey A., and Chris Feige. “The Opium Wars, Opium Legislation, and Opium Consumption in China.” Discussion Paper No. 2072. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Institute of Economics Research, May 2005. Richardson, Philip. Economic Change in China, c. 1800-1950. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999, chapters 2, 4, and 7, pp. 16-24, 40-53, and 84-97. ISBN: 0521583969.
14	Japan	Flath, David. The Japanese Economy. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000, chapter 2, pp. 21-42. ISBN: 0198775040. Bernhofen, Daniel M., and John C. Brown. “An Empirical Assessment of the Comparative Advantage Gains from Trade: Evidence from Japan.” American Economic Review 95 (March 2005): 208-25.
15	Latin America	Engerman, Stanley L., and Kenneth L. Sokoloff. “Factor Endowments, Institutions, and Differential Paths of Growth Among New World Economies: A View from Economic Historians of the United States.” In How Latin America Fell Behind: Essays on the Economic Histories of Brazil and Mexico, 1800-1914. Edited by Stephen Haber. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997, pp. 260-304. ISBN: 0804727376. Frank, Zephyr L. “Exports and Inequality: Evidence from the Brazilian Frontier, 1870-1937.” Journal of Economic History 61 (March 2001): 37-58. Haber, Stephen. “Mexico Before 1982: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Rule.” In The Second Mexican Revolution: Politics, Economics and Society Since 1982. Edited by Stephen Haber, et al. (Forthcoming.)
The United States
16	Industrialization in the North	Irwin, Douglas A. “The Aftermath of Hamilton’s ‘Report on Manufactures’.” Journal of Economic History 64 (September 2004): 800-21. Goldin, Claudia, and Kenneth Sokoloff. “Women, Children, and Industrialization in the Early Republic: Evidence from the Manufacturing Census.” Journal of Economic History 42 (December 1982): 741-74. Calomiris, Charles W. “Is Deposit Insurance Necessary?” Journal of Economic History 50 (June 1990): 283-95.
17	The South and Slavery	Fogel, Robert William. Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery. New York, NY: Norton, 1989, chapter 3, pp. 60-80. ISBN: 0393018873. Steckel, Richard H. “A Peculiar Population: The Nutrition, Health, and Mortality of American Slaves from Childhood to Maturity.” Journal of Economic History 46 (1986): 721-41.
18	The Aftermath of Slavery	Alston, Lee J., and Joseph P. Ferrie. “Paternalism in Agricultural Labor Contracts in the U.S. South: Implications for the Growth of the Welfare States.” American Economic Review 83 (September 1993): 852-76. Sacerdote, Bruce. “Slavery and the Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital.” Review of Economics and Statistics. (Forthcoming.) Heckman, James J. “Determining the Impact of Federal Antidiscrimination Policy on the Economic Status of Blacks: A Study of South Carolina.” American Economic Review 79 (March 1989): 138-77.
19	Labor Participation	Goldin, Claudia. Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1990, chapters 4-5, pp. 83-158. ISBN: 0195050770. Costa, Dora. “Pensions and Retirement: Evidence from Union Army Veterans.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 110 (May 1995): 297-320.
20	The Modern Corporation	Chandler, Alfred Dupont, and Takashi Hikino. Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1990, chapter 2, pp. 14-46. ISBN: 0674789946. Granitz, Elizabeth, and Benjamin Klein. “Monopolization by ‘Raising Rivals’ Costs’: The Standard Oil Case.” Journal of Law and Economics 32 (April 1996): 1-47.
The Twentieth Century
21	The Great Depression	Temin, Peter. Lessons from the Great Depression. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989, chapters 1-2, pp. 1-87. ISBN: 0262200732. Bernanke, Ben. “Nonmonetary Effects of the Financial Crisis in the Propagation of the Great Depression.” American Economic Review 73 (June 1983): 257-76. ———. “The Macroeconomics of the Great Depression: A Comparative Approach.” Journal of Money, Credit and Banking 27 (1995): 1-28.
22	Recovery	Temin, Peter. Lessons from the Great Depression. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989, chapter 3, pp. 89-137. ISBN: 0262200732. Obstfeld, Maurice, and Alan M. Taylor. “The Great Depression as a Watershed: International Capital Mobility over the Long Run.” In The Defining Moment: The Great Depression and the American Economy in the Twentieth Century. Edited by Michael D. Bordo, Claudia Dale Goldin, and Eugene Nelson White. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998, pp. 353-402. ISBN: 0226065898. Gordon, Robert J. “Interpreting the ‘One Big Wave’ in U.S. Long-term Productivity Growth.” In Productivity, Technology and Economic Growth. Edited by Bart van Ark, Simon K. Kuipers, and Gerard H. Kuper. Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000, pp. 19-65. ISBN: 0792379608. Reprinted in Gordon, Robert J. Productivity Growth, Inflation and Unemployment: The Collected Essays of Robert J. Gordon. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 50-89. ISBN: 0521800080.
23	The Economics of Wars	Costa, Dora L., and Matthew E. Kahn. “Cowards and Heroes: Group Loyalty in the American Civil War.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 118, no. 2 (May 2003): 519-48. Thompson, Peter. “How Much Did the Liberty Ship Builders Learn? New Evidence on an Old Case Study.” Journal of Political Economy 109, no. 1 (February 2001): 103-37.
24	Assessing U.S. Growth	Romer, Christina. “New Estimates of Prewar Gross National Product and Unemployment.” Journal of Economic History 46, no. 2 (1986): 341-352. Costa, Dora L. “Estimating Real Income in the United States from 1888 to 1994: Correcting CPI Bias Using Engel Curves.” Journal of Political Economy 109 (December 2001): 1288-1310.
25	Inequality	Goldin, Claudia, and Robert A. Margo. “The Great Compression: The Wage Structure in the United States at Mid-Century.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 107 (February 1992): 1-34. Goldin, Claudia, and Lawrence F. Katz. “Decreasing (and then Increasing) Inequality in America: A Tale of Two Half-Centuries.” In The Causes and Consequences of Increasing Inequality. Edited by Finis Welch. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001, pp. 37-77. ISBN: 0226893014. Costa, Dora L. “The Wage and the Length of the Work Day: From the 1890s to 1991.” Journal of Labor Economics 18 (January 2000): 156-181.
Final Exam